Whether the ancient Greeks really got past the gates of Troy with a wooden horse is unclear. But a modern version of the ploy is being used against the sa国际传媒 Health Ministry.
Pharmaceutical firms are lobbying for access to confidential patient files held by the ministry. In exchange, they鈥檙e holding out a vague, yet tantalizing, prospect: Give us access to this material, and we will extract insights from it that may revolutionize patient care.
This promise is not without substance. In the U.S., researchers have found unguessed-at linkages by trolling through archives of patient records.
Antibiotic medications were shown to reduce the effectiveness of birth control pills by this method. The same technique unearthed a linkage between anxiety-reducing benzodiazepines, such as Valium, and hip fractures.
Moreover in this field, sa国际传媒 represents the motherlode. Our health ministry has one of the most extensive databases in North America, if not the world.
Part of the inventory is a compilation of every prescription filled at every pharmacy across the province over the past 18 years. That鈥檚 a trove of 1.5 billion files, each containing the patient鈥檚 identity, the physician鈥檚 name and drug prescribed.
Pharmaceutical companies would pay large sums to sift through those records. They might indeed come up with some new insights into patient care.
But just as importantly, they could use the information to boost sales of their products. The international consulting firm, McKinsey & Co., estimates the dollar value of repositories like these in the hundreds of millions.
There is, however, a problem. Commercial exploitation of health data is not permitted in sa国际传媒 The only groups who are supposed to get access are academic researchers or not-for-profit agencies.
This policy is strongly supported by Canadians. Polling firms report overwhelming opposition to giving the private sector access, particularly if the companies are based in the U.S., as most drug firms are.
In addition, there are serious privacy concerns. At present, health files are 鈥渁nonymized鈥� before university researchers get access. That means patient identifiers like names and personal health numbers are stripped away.
But data trolling, on the scale envisaged here, can get around these protections. Feed enough patient information into a supercomputer 鈥� age, sex, height, weight, previous ailments, racial origin, etc. 鈥� and it becomes possible to say that a woman of a certain age and of a particular ethnic origin living on a specific road in View Royal had a hysterectomy 10 years ago.
Is that an invasion of privacy? Yes, if there is only one person in the neighbourhood who matches that description.
Despite these risks, it appears the sa国际传媒 government wants to move forward. The minister responsible for technology and innovation is slated to speak at a conference next month where these ideas will be floated.
The outgoing deputy minister of health told a trade magazine that his ministry is exploring 鈥渙pportunities to support more access to depersonalized health information by industry.鈥�
And membership of the ministry鈥檚 data-stewardship committee had been tilted to give private-sector interests a stronger voice. This is the group that determines who gets access to patient records.
These are very deep waters. Privacy experts fear there is no practical way to legislate against every possible abuse. There are simply too many variables when dealing with huge archives of data.
In the end, it comes down to the motives of those who are granted access. Academic researchers have no stock prices or profit margins to worry about.
Pharmaceutical companies, for all the essential work they do, occupy a different place. There may indeed be nuggets of wisdom buried deep in our personal health records. But opening these files to private industry feels rather like dragging a Trojan horse through the gates.
